Trading strategy

In finance, a trading strategy is a fixed plan that is designed to achieve a profitable return by going long or short in markets. The main reasons that a properly researched trading strategy helps are its verifiability, quantifiability, consistency, and objectivity. The development and application of a trading strategy follows eight steps: (1) Formulation, (2) Specification in computer-testable form, (3) Preliminary testing, (4) Optimization, (5) Evaluation of performance and robustness, (6) Trading of the strategy, (7) Monitoring of trading performance, (8) Refinement and evolution.

For every trading strategy one needs to define assets to trade, entry/exit points and money management rules. Bad money management can make a potentially profitable strategy unprofitable.

Trading strategies are based on fundamental or technical analysis, or engage them both. Technical strategies can be broadly divided into the mean-reversion and momentum groups. There are also specific strategies, like "Sell in May and go away but remember to get back in September". Trading strategies are usually verified by backtesting, where the process should follow the scientific method, and by forward testing (a.k.a. 'paper trading') where they are tested in a simulated trading environment. Momentum signals (e.g., 52-week high) have been shown to be successful in trading strategies and are used by financial analysts in their buy and sell recommendations.

The term trading strategy can in brief be used by any fixed plan of trading a financial instrument, but the general use of the term is within computer assisted trading, where a trading strategy is implemented as computer program for automated trading.

Trading strategies are speculative. The systematic search for profit through speculative activities is contrary to religious morality

The trading strategy is developed by the following methods:

Usually the performance of a trading strategy is measured on the risk-adjusted basis. Probably the most known risk-adjusted performance measure is the Sharpe ratio. However, in practice one usually compares the expected return against the volatility of returns and/or the maximum drawdown. Normally, higher expected return implies higher volatility and drawdown. The choice of the risk-reward trade-off strongly depends on trader's risk preferences. Often the performance is measured against a benchmark, the most common one is an Exchange-traded fund on a stock index. In the long term a strategy that acts according to Kelly criterion beats any other strategy. However, Kelly's approach was heavily criticized by Paul Samuelson.

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